


Who's Lettin' Go Today

by guineapiggie



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Angst, Canon Compliant, Flashbacks, I think?, M/M, Mid-Canon, also featuring but not exactly inspired by music, if that is the term for the time after the kids part, inspired very much by the whole R+ drama, movie-verse time-wise, pure undiluted angst and nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 12:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20153836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guineapiggie/pseuds/guineapiggie
Summary: You weren’t supposed to think boys were beautiful, but Richie thought that was dumb. Well, it was dumb in general, but it was dumber with boys like Eddie Kaspbrak in the world whose long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks in the orange glow of his reading lamp.He remembered feeling – maybe even saying – that a part of him died that night, his back against Eddie's bedroom wall and his socked feet kicking into that hideous quilt and his arm slung, against better judgement, around Eddie’s bony shoulders.





	Who's Lettin' Go Today

**Author's Note:**

> I considered making the difference between the memories and the stuff set in the hotel room more obvious, but then I guess that would kind of defeat the point.  


His hotel room was small and dismal but quiet, and Richie was grateful for that. He dropped down on the bed, absent-mindedly trying to kick off his shoes like they were trainers, but of course they weren’t so they didn’t come off, and somehow, that made his headache even worse.

He was tired, and scared, and he felt lost somewhere between 1989 and now and a handful of times and places that had probably never happened at all.

He rubbed his fingers over the scars on his hand, the long thin ones in his palms that had turned up with Mike’s call… then the other one, a thicker, shorter one on the back of his left hand, between his thumb and his forefinger. He wasn’t quite sure when that had turned up; wasn’t even sure, in fact, if it had ever been gone. But suddenly, he thought he could recall how he’d got it, how the tip of an old knife from their kitchen drawer had torn the tender skin there, not too deep but messy and… what had he been doing?

His last months in Derry were still no more than a blur, and a part of him hoped they would stay just that, because he could already taste the sadness and the dull ache threatening to come with them. But some things _were_ coming back, just small, seemingly random memories that were sharp and bright like professional photographs among the all-too familiar mess in his head.

There was Bev’s fiery hair whipping around her head, and on her face a sudden, heart-wrenching sadness breaking through the wild laughter. Around them, the lights of the carnival were all in a colourful, mindless blur and Richie could feel the wind in his hair and the rush of excitement still tingling in his stomach. But the clearest thing was the sudden stillness in her face, the slow soft sadness in her brown eyes; that moment they both realised they would grow up in a world that didn’t have the other in it.

Was this the night before she’d left, then? Richie couldn’t rightly remember, but it must have been around then, for sure.

There were the taillights of a car in the dusk, going down Main Street and heading west, and Stan’s and Ben’s panting breath behind him and his heart hammering from running to catch a glimpse of it. Who’d been in that car? If it really had been Stan and Ben behind him, it’d had to have been Bill, right, because Bev… Bev had left on the train, there was a hazy memory of the platform somewhere in the back of his head, and Mike’d never left.

And Richie had left before Eddie.

And there was Memorial park, colours all washed out by the sunlight. Across the lawn, there was a curly-haired boy in a polo shirt feeding sparrows, and there was the strange, distant sadness in his heart when Richie realised he didn’t want to call out for him, or drop down on the bench and make a joke about what an old man Stan was at heart.

When had Stan left Derry, anyway? Had Richie still been there?

There was that windy morning in September when a girl from his class raised her hand and told the teacher that Ben Hanscom wasn’t present, and Richie realised with dim horror and disappointment that he hadn’t even noticed.

His fingers rubbed and rubbed over the short, thick scar like it was still itchy and healing after all those years –

There he was, struggling through Eddie’s window with all the grace of a seal on land… because Mrs K sent him away earlier, that was right; sent him away no matter how many times he had repeated “we’re leaving tomorrow, Mrs K” in a voice that sounded like no voice that had ever come out of Richie’s mouth before. And there was Eddie, watching him with equal parts resignation, unwilling amusement and something else neither one of them had ever made an effort to place before. And this wasn’t the moment for it, was it, not when Richie’s things were all packed and stacked by the door of his room, and Mrs K was looking at available apartments in New York every morning. Eddie’s eyes were dark in the fading light and his fingers dug deep into the quilt on his bed, and his mouth was a thin, hard line in his pale face.

You weren’t supposed to think boys were beautiful, but Richie thought that was dumb. Well, it was dumb in general, but it was dumber with boys like Eddie Kaspbrak in the world whose long lashes cast shadows on his cheeks in the orange glow of his reading lamp.

He remembered feeling – maybe even saying – that a part of him died that night, his back against Eddie's bedroom wall and his socked feet kicking into that hideous quilt and his arm slung, against better judgement, around Eddie’s bony shoulders.

His thumb ran along the scar, up and down and up and down, while Richie realised something that coaxed a wry, bitter smile on his lips: up until a few days ago, he hadn’t remembered any of this, and would have had no memory of it if somebody else had described it to him… but the taste of the words “the end of an era”, that got thrown around three times an hour as soon as the red lights turned on in the studio – _“death of Elvis, the end of an era”, “Cobain dies, the end of an era”, “Oasis splits up, the end of an era”_ (God, Richie had nearly bitten his lip bloody trying not laugh at that one) – the taste of those words… that moment was where he’d gotten it from. That quiet evening in early October, watching the light seep out of the stormy sky outside and seeing the glow of the lamp dully reflected on Eddie’s dark hair and allowing himself, finally, uselessly, to accept the truth about what this all was.

About what he would ask the universe for, if he didn’t know the universe would laugh at him and if he didn’t know it would scare Eddie to death and if all of this wasn’t going to be left behind in the rear-view mirror the next morning anyway, and the memory somehow already running through his fingers while it was still forming in his head.

The end of an era. It hadn't come with fire and brimstone and horror, and it hadn't played out in the sewers, after all. It had just gone out, faded with that last dusk, very quietly, without putting up a fight.

The skin around the scar was all red now, and his dry throat begging for another drink despite the debilitating headache he was developing, but he couldn’t stop.

_There_. There was the next morning, there was the wood under his hand, warmed by the sun and worn smooth by the years. He hadn’t even been sure why the hell he was doing this, why he’d raced off from the half-packed car at the last minute to do it.

Maybe because of that unsurprising epiphany he’d had there in the twilight, too aware of the rise and fall of Eddie’s shoulder blades with every breath, too aware of the bony knee pressed against his like it was nothing… maybe it hadn’t been surprising, or an epiphany at all, really, but maybe it had been too big and too heavy to drive off with it.

Maybe it had weighed his chest down too much and he’d needed to put it down somewhere, and this had been all he could think of to do it. After all, Victor Criss had been dead, hadn’t he, and even if he’d wanted to Richie couldn’t walk up to his house and yell, _hey Vic, remember how you called me a four-eyed faggot? Well, I’m getting rid of these stupid fucking glasses but I guess you were right about the rest, and you can quote me on that if you want, asshat!_

(Or maybe it had just been the truth, and the idea of leaving this place behind without even a trace of evidence of it had been too hard to bear.)

(Maybe, just maybe, he'd even hoped Eddie might see it. Or maybe he wouldn't have touched that idea with a ten foot pole.)

Anyway, he had clearly always been a fucking spastic with no fine motor skills to speak of, because he had slipped and cut his hand long before his mother had turned up and called out for him. He remembered that too, now, the warm blood trickling down his wrist in a thin red line while he finished up on the plus sign… and he remembered flinching violently when his mother’s voice rang out across the bridge, and jumping to his feet and somehow succeeding to covertly wipe off the blood before she could see. He’d kicked the old kitchen knife in his hand straight off the bridge in his panic, suddenly wildly embarrassed and afraid she would know what he’d been up to.

(“What are you doing, Richie?”

“Just… just getting a last look at this place, Ma. You know, for when I write my memoirs and all, wouldn’t wanna get it wrong and get strongly worded letters.”

She’d laughed, and Richie had felt a little less like crying.)

But he had cried, hadn’t he, later in the car, and his mother had never gotten the blood stain out of his jeans and had wound up throwing them away without asking him. They had been his good jeans, the ones that weren’t torn that his mother told him to wear when he was supposed to look like a well-behaved kid. He’d worn them that day when they’d tried to visit Eddie at the hospital, and again when Mrs K had sent him away on her doorstep months later (and still when he’d climbed up on her roof, as a last _fuck you _to the deranged old bird).

Jesus, all that just gone. How had he lived without all those memories? How had he never thought it weird how little he remembered? How had none of his…

Well, he called them _friends_. Now that he remembered what that word had meant that summer, he didn’t think the term really applied.

And shit, it hadn’t applied to Eddie, either, not that last night and not for a long time before that. And Richie hadn’t been allowed more than one night and one silent car ride with that truth, until Derry or It or Bill’s fucking turtle had taken it from him again, and all the rest right with it.

Damn, nearly twenty-seven years without so much as a memory of his name, twenty-seven years with no memory of his first love at all except for the vague notion that he’d had a crush on a boy once, just enough to know that about himself… and now all of it back like it’d never been gone, all that clarity and confusion and want and all that pounding in his head, all those spiteful little voices.

_Hey Richie-boy, _they crooned happily_, you miss us yet? You miss looking over your shoulder when your friends’ hands touch yours in the popcorn bowl? You miss starting every thought with ‘I can’t but if I could’ and ‘if only that fucking idiot would let me I would ‘…? _

Richie shook his head until the pounding got too much to bear, then got up, splashed his face with cold water, turned on the radio and tried to let his mind drift with the music for a bit - _November Rain, _the guitar riffs shrill and thin on the crappy little radio, but still his thoughts prattled on at full speed with no end in sight.

_You miss us yet, Richie? You miss us? We’ve missed you, buddy, we’ve been waiting for you –_

_This is It, _he told himself firmly, which cut through some of the noise, _It is doing this, don’t listen, Richie. Don’t play along. _

_(But is it really, _another little voice whispered, and he winced. _Maybe you torture yourself just fine on your own, and isn’t that a scary thought?)_

He forced his mind back on the song, every familiar note, every word of the lyrics even though they seemed to soak up his memories like a sponge, until he felt like crying and the unease had crept back into the shadows whence it had come.

Twenty-seven years, he thought bitterly, and now he was sprawled out on a hotel bed with new old scars on his hands and staring up at the ceiling and trying not to think about who else was booked into this dingy shithole and wondering if that carving was still there, and if he would live long enough to check.

And if, by this time tomorrow, he would be alive enough, and wise or old or brave enough (_fuck to all of those, not me, not Richie Tozier, no fucking way_) to finish what he’d started all those years ago.

* * *

> _If we could take the time to lay it on the line_  
_I could rest my head just knowing that you were mine_  
_ All mine_
> 
> <strike> _So if you want to love me, then darling, don’t refrain  
Or I’ll just end up walking in the cold November rain_ </strike>

**Author's Note:**

> this seems redundant, but: title and quote at the end taken from _November Rain_ by Guns N' Roses (which, by the way, feels like a song there should be edits of for this ship, just saying)


End file.
